Consumers have in recent times been desirous of eating wholesome and nutritious snack foods. Milk-containing puddings have long been considered nutritious and wholesome foods. Consumers are, however, requiring that the foods they eat, particularly snack food and dessert items, be essentially ready-to-eat. The lifestyles of this era do lend themselves to the task of preparing foods significantly in advance of consumption. Thus the amounts of cooked puddings and even instant puddings prepared in the home environment has been decreasing in recent years.
To fill the need of consumers for pudding dessert or snack items which require no preparation on the part of the consumer, there exists ready-to-eat puddings which are usually marketed in single-service portions. Initially these products were marketed as shelf-stable canned products. These canned puddings which have been subjected to a retort step during processing do not process the texture and flavor which consumers associate with home-cooked pudding. More recently, single-service portions of refrigerated aseptically-packaged pudding products have entered the market; however, these puddings also have been judged to possess textural defects and/or inconsistencies.
We have found that the aseptically-packaged pudding products available from others contain a relatively high level of starch of about 4.5% or more by weight of the pudding. It is believed that this level of starch was felt necessary in order to produce a pudding which possessed a desirably high viscosity and was also free from syneresis during a refrigerated distribution and storage period which could extend to three months or more. Such puddings are characterized as having an undesirable pasty or starchy texture and mouthfeel and do not exhibit the clean, smooth, melt-in-the-mouth texture and mouthfeel that consumers obtain from fresh, homemade puddings. In addition, these high starch pudding formulations possess a high after-cook viscosity which requires the use of swept-surfaces heat exchangers in order to cool the pudding prior to packaging. Such a process is described in an article found in Food Processing, September 1982 at pages 92-94 and entitled, "Aseptically Processed Puddings Last 9+ Months In Refrigerated Storage." Swept-surface heat exchangers require a large capital investment and incur high operating and maintenance costs as compared to non-swept-surface heat exchangers, such as fixed plate or tube heat exchangers.
It would be desirable to be able to produce an aseptically-packaged, ready-to-eat pudding which was both free of syneresis and possessed the mouthfeel of home-cooked puddings. It would further be desirable to be able to commercially produce such a pudding utilizing one or more non-swept-surface heat exchangers in order to cool the pudding formulation after it has been subjected to a cooking/sterilization step and before the pudding formulation is aseptically-packaged.